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1 The Welfare Loss of Excess Health Insurance Martin S. Feldstein The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 81, No. 2, Part 1. (Mar. - Apr., 1973), pp The Journal of Political Economy is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact Mon Dec 3 13:40:

2 The Welfare Loss of Excess Health Insurance Martin S. Feldstein Harvard University American families are in general overinsured against health expenses. If insurance coverage were reduced, the utility loss from increased risk would be more than outweighed by the gain due to lower prices and the reduced purchase of excess care. The first part of the paper develops and estimates a structural equation for the demand for health care and then examines the dynamic interaction between the purchase of insurance and the demand and supply for health care. The second part estimates the welfare gains that would result from decreasing insurance by raising the average coinsurance rate from 0.33 to 0.50 and 0.67 percent. The most likely values imply net gains in excess of $4 billion. This paper will show that American families are in general overinsured against health expenses. If insurance coverage were reduced, the utility loss from increased risk would be more than outweighed by the gain due to lower costs and the reduced purchase of excess care. Moreover, the estimated net gain from even a one-third reduction in insurance is quite large, probably exceeding several billion dollars per year. The economics of health insurance is of particular importance today. Health insurance has become a major issue of public policy. Some form of national health insurance is very likely to be enacted within the next few years. Government health insurance payments under Medicare and Medicaid already exceed $8 billion. Private health insurance, encouraged by favorable tax treatment, has increased rapidly; premiums in 1970 exceeded $1 7 billion. Private insurance and government programs together accounted Received for publication October 21, Final version received February 2, I am grateful to Dr. Bernard Friedman for assistance and for discussions about this research and to my wife Kathleen for comments on a previous draft. The study was financed by a grant from the National Center for Health Services Research and Development, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

3 252 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY for over 59 percent of personal health expenditures and nearly 87 percent of hospital bills. Let us consider briefly the basic reasons why too much health insurance can actually reduce welfare. At first this seems contrary to much of the recent literature on the economics of insurance.l It is well known that if certain conditions are satisfied, it is optimal for individuals to insure completely against all uncertain expenses. hforeover, these personally optimal decisions are also Pareto optimal for the community as a whole by extension of the usual welfare analysis to Arrow-Debreu contingent commodities (Arrow 1964). For health care, however, the usually assumed conditions are not satisfied. In particular, the level of expenditure on health care is not a purely exogenous random variable. Even if the occurrence of illness is beyond the individual's control, his demand for care (given any illness) is to some extent a discretionary decision. Insurance against expenditure for health services therefore increases the consumption of those services unless demand is completely price inelastic. This destroys the optimality of complete insurance. The welfare loss due to the distortion of demand must be balanced against the welfare gain of risk spreading. The individual's optimal insurance policy therefore involves some degree of risk sharing or "coin~urance."~ Health insurance also introduces a quite different distortion because of the special character of the health-care market. The price and type of health services that are available to any individual reflect the extent of health insurance among other members of the community. A previous study (Feldstein 1970) showed that physicians raise their fees (and may improve their services) when insurance becomes more extensive. Nonprofit hospitals also respond to the growth of insurance by increasing the sophistication and price of their product (Feldstein 1971b). Thus, even the uninsured individual will find that his expenditure on health services is affected by the insurance of others. Moreover, the higher price of physician and hospital services encourages more extensive use of insurance. For the community as a whole, therefore, the spread of insurance causes higher prices and more sophisticated services which in turn cause a further increase in insurance. People spend more on health because they are insured and buy more insurance because of the high cost of health care.3 1 See, e.g., Arrow (1963, 1965), Pashigian, Schkade, and Menefee (1966), Borch (1968), Mossin (1968), Smith (1968), and Gould (1969). 2 This point was made by Pauly (1968) in a comment on Arrow (1963). The basic problem has long been referred to in the insurance literature as "moral hazard." The welfare loss due to price distortion has received extensive analysis in relation to taxes and public pricing (e.g., Hotelling 1938; and Harberger 1964). This reason for a deductible or coinsurance is of course quite different from the case considered by Arrow (1963), Pashigian et al. (1966), and Smith (1968) in which risk is truly random but the insurance company does not sell actuarially fair policies. 3 Richard Rosett has called my attention to the similarity of this situation to the prisoners' dilemma problem.

4 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 253 The purpose of this paper is to analyze the economics of health insurance in greater detail and to provide estimates of the relevant magnitudes. The first two sections develop a more specific analysis of the demand for health insurance and its dependence on the price of health services: the third shows how insurance raises the price of hospital care: and the fourth, derives specific estimates of the potential welfare gain from reduced price distortion and the potential welfare loss from reduced risk avoidance. A final section summarizes the analysis and suggests a way out of the current dilemma. The Demand for Health Insurance The demand for insurance is not like the demand for most goods and services. Health insurance is purchased not as a final consumption good but as a means of paying for the future stochastic purchases of health services. The influences of both price and income are therefore different from their usual roles in demand analysis. A number of special institutional features must also be taken into account in analyzing the demand for health insurance. Before discussing the determinants of demand in detail, a measure of the "quantity" of insurance that an individual purchases must be provided. Actual insurance policies are characterized by a complex mixture of coinsurance rates, deductibles, exclusions, ceilings, and special schedules. To reduce this to a single parametric measure of the quantity of insurance, I shall assume that an insured person pays a fixed fraction of all health expenditures with that fraction depending on the insurance policy chosen. In insurance terminology. this is equal to the coinsurance rate. A useful simple measure of the quantity of insurance is the inverse of the average coinsurance rate in the population: this varies from one in the absence of insurance to infinity when there is complete insurance. Consider now the role of price in determining the demand for insurance. The premium for a given quantity of insurance actually reflects two different prices: the price of insurance per se and the price of health services. The price of insurance per se can be measured by the ratio of the premium charged to the expected benefits. It reflects the administrative costs and profits of the insurance companies. The higher the ratio of premiums to benefits, the smaller is the family's optimal quantity of insurance.wver the past 20 years, changes in the premiumlbenefit ratio have been small relative to changes in the total premium cost for a given quantity of insurance and have, to a substantial extent, been a reflection of the growth of group coverage. Moreover, because of the relatively high variance in family 'See Arrow (1963), Pashigian ct a1 (1966), Smith (1968), and Fricdman (1971) for a formal analysis of this tqpe of problem This of course assumes that the substitution effect dominates the income effect.

5 2 54 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY health expenditures, the insurance buyer's uncertainty about the expected benefits probably outweighs the relatively small changes in the premium/ benefit ratio. The effect of changes in the price of health services on the demand for insurance is both more important and more complex. In the likely case in which the elasticity of demand for services is between zero and minus one. an increase in the price of health services increases the total expenditure on them. This, in effect, increases the expenditure risk against which the individual insures and therefore raises the demand for in~urance.~ Income also affects the demand for health insurance in unusual ways. For a given probability distribution of health expenses, higher income tends to make families more willing to assume risk, which in turn reduces their demand for ins~rance.~ Against this must be balanced three ways in which higher income tends to raise the demand for insurance. First, families with higher incomes are likely to spend more for health services at any net price. In a sense, therefore, they have greater expenditure risk against which to insure. Moreover, insurance premiums are generally not higher for families with higher incomes. This effectively lowers the ratio of premiums to expected benefits and may even make it less than one. Second, higher-income fanlilies can benefit more from the tax rule that employer payments for health insurance are not part of taxable income. This tax treatment is often sufficient to make the net cost of the premium less than the expected value of benefits (Feldstein and Allison 1972). Third, low-income families have generally been eligible for medical care at public expense, even before the introduction of Medicaid. For them, the value of private insurance is substantially reduced. The net effect of income on the demand for insurance is therefore indeterminate. A variety of other factors influence the demand for health services and. therefore, for health insurance. A previous study (Feldstein 1971b) showed that a greater local availability of hospital beds increases the quantity of It is interesting to compare this relation with the usual concept of complementarity. Health insurance might be called an "expenditure complement" of health services because its demand falls when a rise in the price of health services reduces the espenditure and not merely the quantity purchased. An increase in the price oi insurance per se lowers the demand for health services, not because of the usual complementarity effect but because the resulting decrease in the quantity of insurance raises the effective price of health services at the time of illness. Alternatively, if one ignores the two facets of premium and treats the premium as the price of insurance, health insurance may behave like a Giffen good. GThis need not be true if the utility function is not characterized by decreasing absolute risk aversion (Pratt 1964; Arrow 1965). Moreover, even this substantially simplifies the problem by considering a utility function whose only argument is net wealth..4 satisfactory theory would include a measure of health as well. The effect of wealth on insurance would then depend on the way in which the two arguments of the utility function were interrelated. For an analysis of these problems and an explicit model of the choice among insurance options, see Friedman (1971). For a discussion of further complexities, see Schelling (1968).

6 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE *55 hospital services demanded directly as well as through a lower price. More general practitioners in an area reduce the demand for hospital care while more specialists increase it. Population density and other demographic factors also influence the demand for care.i Factors that raise the demand for services increase the expenditure risk and thus increase the demand for insurance. At the same time, the factors that increase the use of services also have an effect that tends to reduce the demand for insurance. Recall that the households' optimal quantity of insurance reflects a balancing of the gain from additional risk spreading against the loss of consuming additional care whose value is less than its actuarial cost. Factors (such as the availability of hospital beds) that increase the use of services lower the value of the marginal unit of care and thus reduce the optimal quantity of insurance. The most important institutional feature of the health insurance market is that most insurance is purchased by groups rather than by individuals. The most common type of group is the employees of a firm or the associated labor union. Such groups are much more common in manufacturing and government services than in industries such as agriculture, retail distribution, and construction. The purchase of health insurance is often compulsory or highly subsidized for members of such groups. An individual's type of employment is therefore likely to have a substantial effect on his probability of being insured. illoreover, there are several reasons why the quantity of insurance per insured person is also likely to be greater in group policies than in policies purchased by individuals. Groups enjoy much lower premiumlbenefit ratios: this reflects both economies of scale in administration and a general absence of adverse selection. The tax rule that excludes employer payments for health insurance from taxable income encourages employees to forego money income for more comprehensive insurance. It is also likely that employees assume that employer payments for health insurance do not result in a corresponding decrease in money income. This encourages the tendency of both unions and employers to provide relatively comprehensive benefit^.^ Finally, an empirical analysis of the demand for health insurance should recognize the habitual character of the demand for insurance services. The importance of group purchases of insurance reinforces this tendency for the frequency and quantity of insurance coverage to change slo~ly.~ 7 Much less is known about the demand for physicians' services. Feldstein (1970) concludes that excess demand prevails in the market for physicians' services and that the parameters oi a demand function cannot be estimated. The empirical analysis of the following sections deals primarily with insurance for hospital services. 8 Their desire that these benefits be clearly visible to employees may explain the tendency to insure against relatively small expenses (including drugs and physicians' iees) while "castastrophic" expenses of very low probability are left uninsured. V received a copy of the interesting paper by Ehrlich and Becker (1972) too late to incorporate their insights on "self-insurance" and "self-protection" in the current

7 2 ~ 6 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Estimated Demand Equations The previous section provides a basis for specifying an empirical demand function for hospital insurance and, in particular, for estimating the effect of the price of hospital services on the demand for insurance. The data used in the study are a cross section of time series for individual stateslo for the years Comparable data on insurance coverage are not available before The introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in 1966 creates problems of the substitution of public for private insurance that cannot be studied until more disaggregated data become available. Measurement and Specification Two measures of the demand for hospital insurance will be used: ENRit is the proportion of the population in state i in year t that is enrolled for health insurance;ll QINSit is a measure of the "quantity" of insurance as described above. More specifically, if the average coinsurance rate among those who are insured is denoted COINS," the quantity of insurance is measured by QINS = [(I - ENR) + ENR.COIlVS] -I. (11 This implies that if the entire population were insured (ENR = 11, the value of QIh7Swould equal the inverse of the coinsurance rate as suggested above. More generally, aqins/denr > 0 and dqins/dcoins < 0. Although the proportions of the population in each state and year who have insurance are available (Health Insurance Institute , the corresponding values of COINS are not. Because of the data limitations, it was necessary to assume that COINS varied from year to year but not among the states. The annual values of COINS were calculated by a method similar to that described in Feldstein ( 1971b).I3 analysis. The extensive use of health insurance, its provision by employers and the government, and the fact that the individual's premium is generally independent of his own behavior may tend to reduce self-protection (e.g., preventive care and good health habits) and self-insurance (e.g., early treatment and the reduction of work activities that exacerbate an illness). The effect is unclear, however, because some of the self-protection and self-insurance activities in relation to expensive serious illness are actually insured (e.g., preventive care and early treatment) while others are not (e.g., good diet and reduction of work activities). A full analysis would require an extension of the Ehrlich-Becker binary event model to multiple conditional risks. 10 Because of the special character of the Washington, D.C., area, a composite unit of Washington, Virginia, and Maryland was created. 11Each enrollment proportion was actually adjusted for the age-sex composition of the state's population by dividing the raw enrollment proportion by an age index number. This index number is a weighted average of the proportions of the state population in eight age-sex groups, weighting by the relative national insurance coverage rates in those groups. 12This variable is thus different from INS as used in Feldstein (1970, 1971b) ; it does not reflect the price paid by uninsured patients. 13The current estimates represent a slight improvement because 3 years of survey

8 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 257 The price of insurance services (PINS) was estimated for each state and year as the ratio of total health insurance premiums to benefits. Because the premium/benefit ratio is lower for hospital insurance than for other forms of health insurance, PINS overestimates the true value in a way which varies among observations depending on their mix of insurance coverage. Separate state data for hospital insurance benefits and premiums is not available. A regression of PINS on the mix of health insurance proportions (hospital, medical, and surgical) was therefore used to derive an adjusted premium/benefit ratio (PINSA ). The price of hospital care (PCARE) was measured by the average cost per patient day in short-term general hospitals (American Hospital Association ) deflated by the consumer price index for that year. Two measures of the state's income distribution were studied. The first is the mean per capita income deflated by the annual value of the CPI; this is denoted INC.' The second measure is an attempt to derive a single variable summary of the state's income distribution that is more relevant to the demand for insurance. It is essentially a weighted average of the household incomes in the state, weighting each income by an estimate of the national proportion of persons with that income who are insured. A more specific description of this variable, denoted INSINC, is given in the Appendix. The impact of other factors that affect hospital use was taken into account in a way that utilizes the information found in a previous study of the demand for hospital services (Feldstein 1971 b). It was shown there that the number of patient days demanded (PDD) could be represented by a function of the form:14 PDD = k PCAREVl INS-71 INC72 11 X;O', (2) j>2 where INS measures the effect of both private insurance and other programs that reduce the price of care to uninsured persons and the Xjs include demographic factors, availability, etc. The constraint that the coefficients of PCARE and INS are of equal absolute value implies that patients' demand responds to the the net price that they pay. The effect on demand of the Xjs is therefore proportional to PDD. (PCARE/INS) -71 INC-72. This composite term, calculated using the estimated values = and $jz = 0.29 from the previous demand study, will be referred to as USEX. The employment variable used to represent the effect of group purchase was defined as the proportion of employees in the state who worked in manufacturing or government services. It will be denoted GROUP. data were employed, and relative utilization rates were related to the changing relative prices. The survey data are from Andersen and Anderson (1967). 14 See n. 12.

9 2 ~ 8 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Finally, the habitual nature of insurance demand has been represented by a proportional adjustment model. For the enrollment equation this specification is: where ENRit*, the long-run equilibrium enrollment proportion corresponding to the current values of the explanatory variables, is defined by the relation (using lowercase symbols to represent the logarithms of the corresponding uppercase variables) : Although it would in principle have been desirable to examine more general lag structures to represent habitual behavior,15 the short time series available for each state contains too little information to be useful for this. The final estimation equations for ENR and QIKS are thus of the form: Estimation Equation (5) is part of a complete model of the health-care sector.16 The explanatory variables pins, pcare, and usex are endogenous. The equation was estimated by an instrumental variable procedure that yields consistent parameter estimates. More specifically, the set of instruments contains the current and lagged exogenous variables of the equation (group and inc) as well as exogenous variables from other equations of the model. A full twostage least-squares estimator could not be used because the complete model has not yet been fully specified. Although a separate constant term for each state is not included, the lagged dependent variable is treated as endogenous, that is, it is not included in the instrument set. This maintains the consistency of the parameter estimates even if the disturbances contain a systematic "state effect" or are otherwise serially correlated.17 Parameter Estimates Table 1 presents parameter estimates for both the proportional enrollment (ENR) and quantity of insurance (QINS) equations. The estimates show 15 See Houthakker and Taylor (1966) for a variety of habit-adjustment equations. 16 For an earlier discussion of this project and estimates of other parts of the model, see Feldstein (1968, 1971a, 1971b). 17 See Balestra and Nerlove (1966).

10 Dependent Lagged Eq. Variable PCARE USEX PIA%'SA GROUP INC INSZNC Dep. Var. R2 SE 1... QZNS (0.094) [ QZNS wl (0.088) 'Q ENR (0.035) ENR (0.035) NOTE.-Standard errors are shown in parentheses. Long-run elasticities are shown immediately below the standard errors in square brackets. All variables are logarithms. The constant term for each equation is not shown. Estimates are for Estimation is by instrumental variables. The RZ must therefore be interpreted with caution. The final column presents the estimated standard error of the regression.

11 2 60 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY that, despite the offsetting factors that influence the effect of each variable, most of the variables identified in the previous section have a determinate impact. The most important of the coefficients for the general analysis of this paper is the elasticity with respect to the price of care. The estimated values indicate a substantial and significant positive elasticity of both QINS and ENR with respect to PCARE. A rise in the price of hospital services causes an increase in the proportion enrolled and in the total quantity of insurance. The effect of increased expenditure risk thus more than outweighs the tendency to purchase less care (and therefore less insurance) as price rises. The coefficients of USEX, the variable that measures the "location of the demand curve" (i.e., the total effect of the factors other than PCARE and insurance that influence the quantity of hospital care demanded), are significantly positive and, in the QINS equation, approximately equal the coefficients of PCARE. This supports the hypothesis that the demand for insurance reflects the expenditure risk, that is, that QINS responds to changes in the product of price and quantity.ls More generally, this positive elasticity indicates that a rise in any of the factors that increases the demand for hospital care (e.g., the relative number of medical specialists in the area) causes an increase in insurance and thus in the price of care.lq The coefficients of the adjusted price of insurance (PINSA) have the expected sign but are insignificant. Using the unadjusted variable (PINS) also yields insignificant coefficients. The reason for this is not clear. It may well be that most of the variation in the ratio of premiums to benefits is due to differences in the extent of group coverage and to differences in the relative importance of service benefit contracts (the Blue Cross type) and indemnity contracts (offered by commercial insurers). The GROUP variable is significantly positive, showing that the premium and tax advantages associated with group coverage do increase the demand for insurance. Both measures of the income effect are insignificant in the ENR and QINS equations. This probably reflects the balancing of positive and negative income effects noted in the first section. It is not incompatible with the survey evidence20 that higher-income families are more likely to be insured since the INC and INSINC coefficients show the net effect of income after the effect of the type of employment (GROUP) and the local price and use of care are taken into account; all three of these variables are positively correlated with income. 18Exact equality is not to be expected because higher price would reduce the demand for care (and therefore insurance) and higher USEX would, by reducing the marginal value of additional care, reduce the demand for insurance. It is a coincidence that both of these reductions are approximately equal. 1Vhis is in addition to its direct effect (i.e., through increasing the equilibrating price with a fixed quantity of insurance) as discussed in Feldstein (19716). 20 See Appendix.

12 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 261 The lagged dependent variables show that the demand for insurance adjusts quite slowly to changes in the explanatory variables. As might be expected, enrollment adjusts even more slowly than the quantity of insurance. The long-run elasticities are approximately six times the short-run elasticities in the EiVR equations and three times the short-run elasticities in the QINS equations. The Interdependence between Insurance and the Price of Care The previous section established the important impact of the price of care on the demand for insurance. lye continue our analysis of this interdependent relation by examining the effect of insurance on the price of care. The effect of insurance on the price of hospital care has been studied in some detail in a previous paper (Feldstein 1971b)." The mechanism discussed there by which increased insurance raises the price of hospital care is summarized briefly by figure 1. Quadrant I shows the number of bed days of care demanded (BDD) as a function of the price per patient day charged by the hospital (P) when quantity of insurance is fixed. Since the hospital is a nonprofit organization," this price is equal to the average cost per patient day (C) minus whatever deficit the hospital can incur because of charitable contri- BDS "1 Although this section discusses hospital prices and insurance only, the same general point applies to physicians' services. Feldstein (1970) discusses the effect of insurance on the price of physicians' services. '2 The analysis would have to be modified to deal with municipal hospitals and the small number of proprietary hospitals. The market is dominated, however, by the nonprofit institutions.

13 262 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY butions and income from endowments.'"his is shown in the second quadrant. The cost that a hospital can incur per patient day determines the staff and facilities that it can employ. The hospital's decision makers select the input mix that maximizes the quality of care as they perceive it.24 This relation between cost and quality as perceived by the hospital (QH) is shown in the third quadrant. Finally, quadrant IV shows the set of feasible combinations of patient days (BDD) and quality (QH). The curve QB that bounds this set is, in effect, an opportunity locus or "budget constraint" for the hospital's long-run planning. The hospital selects its quantity and quality of services subject to this constraint. The chosen point on the opportunity locus reflects the particular preferences of the hospital decision makers, represented here by the indifference curve U'.25 The effect of an increase in insurance is to raise the demand curve for hospital services to a curve such as D'D' in figure 2. At every price charged by the hospital, the net price paid by the patient is lowered by the increase in insurance, and the quantity demanded is therefore increased. This shift of the demand curve has the effect of shifting the QB opportunity locus further away from the origin (to Q'B'), permitting an increase in both quantity and quality. If both quantity and quality are "normal goods" in the preferences of the hospital, an increase in insurance raises both the price of care and quantity provided. Note that this does not depend on the usual mechanism by which increased demand raises price through BDS 23 Deficits (and surpluses) are generally small and are considered here as exogenous except in the very short run. 24 It is important to note that this is the quality of care as perceived by the hospital. It need not have a comparable effect on patients' health or their perception of quality. 25 See Feldstein (1971b) for a number of clarifications and qualifications of this analysis. See also Klarman (1969) and Feldstein (1971d).

14 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 263 higher profits and higher input costs. It is primarily by inducing a change in the hospital's product that insurance raises its price.26 Figures 3a and 36 combine this relation of price as a function of insurance (the PP curve) with the relation of insurance as a function of price (the II curve) discussed in the previous two sections. Recall that the measure of the quantity of insurance, QIXS as defined by equation (I), can range between one for no insurance and infinity for complete insurance. In figure 3a, the equilibrium elasticity of price with respect to insurance is less than the inverse of the elasticity of insurance with respect to price. The opposite is true in figure 3b. In both cases, the level of price that prevails in equilibrium exceeds the price that would have prevailed if there were no insurance. Other properties of the system, including its dynamic stability and the qualitative effects on P and I of shifts in either of the functions, depend on a more precise specification. The dynamic version of the 11 curve that PCARE I INSURANCE OiNS L INSURANCE OlNS 26 See Feldstein (1971d) for a discussion of the effect on the wages of hospital employees.

15 2 64 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY was estimated in the last section can be summarized as (ignoring the state subscript and using x to denote all of the other variables) : ginst = 2. el xt + h cz pcare, + (1 - h) ginstpl. (6) The effect of insurance on price, described by figure 2 and estimated in a previous study (Feldstein b), can be summarized similarly as:2t After solving this pair of simultaneous difference equations, the dynamics of this system can be represented by the reduced form: It is easy to prove that this system is stable if and only if (1- h p 2~4) (I- h p) < 1. Since the adjustment-rate coefficients (I. and p) are both between zero and one, this inequality is satisfied if the product of the short-run elasticity of QINS with respect to PCARE (h 2) and the shortrun elasticity of PCARE with respect to QINS (u +) is less than one. The estimated values of the former (?, a),presented in table 1, were 0.35 and The system is therefore stable if the short-run elasticity of PCARE with respect to QINS is also less than one. To see that this inequality is satisfied, consider first the long-run elasticity of PCARE with respect to QINS. This reflects both the elasticity of demand with respect to insurance and the extent to which hospitals increase the number of beds when the opportunity locus (QB in fig. 1) shifts. The maximum value of the elasticity occurs when: (1) the demand for hospital care depends only on the net price paid by patients (which is the product of PCARE and the coinsurance rate for insured persons) ; (2) all persons are insured; and (3) hospitals do not increase the bed supply in response to an increase in insurance. In this case, the elasticity of PCARE with respect to QINS is one; such a price increase keeps the net price constant and therefore prevents any excess demand or supply with the constant number of beds. Dropping any of the three assumptions implies a lower elasticity. Moreover, this is a long-run elasticity; the relevant short-run elasticity (u 4) is necessarily lower. The system is therefore stable. The qualitative properties of the response of equilibrium PCARE and QINS to shifts of the ZI and PP functions depends on the relative magni- 27 This simplifies the relation by combining all other variables in zt and by ignoring the difference between INS and QINS. See n. 12 above and Feldstein (1971b).

16 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 2 6 ~ tudes of the long-run elasticities of QINS with respect to PCARE and PCARE with respect to QINS. Equations (6) and (7) imply that figure 3a is relevant if c2 c4 < 1, that is, if the long-run elasticity of QINS with respect to PCARE is less than the inverse of the long-run elasticity of PCARE with respect to QINS. Table 1 shows that the estimated value of the former (Q)is approximately The maximum value of 4 is one, but the most likely value is substantially less. For example, since all persons are not insured, a decrease in the coinsurance rate raises demand less than proportionately. The increased number of hospital beds as demand increases also lowers 4. Finally, there is evidence that the demand for care may be less sensitive to changes in insurance than to changes in the gross price of care. These three factors are likely to make 1 substantially less than one. In figure 3a a change in any of the exogenous factors that raises the demand for insurance shifts the II curve down and to the right. The effect of this is to raise the price of care and therefore to increase the quantity of insurance even more. Similarly, any factor that raises the demand for hospital services or that shifts the PP curve up for any other reason (e.g., a rise in the wages of hospital employees) induces an increase in QINS and therefore magnifies the effect on price. Precise estimates of the extent to which interdependence magnifies these effects would require the full reduced-form equations for the health-care system. Lye can however obtain a useful approximation on the basis of our current analysis. Equation (8) implies that the equilibrium reduced-form PCARE equation is: If a rise in PCARE did not induce an increase in insurance (i.e., ~2 = O), a 1 percent increase in z would cause PCARE to rise 3 percent. The interdependence of price and insurance causes PCARE to rise by ~ /(1-2 4) percent. Even an estimate of E? as low as2w0.25 implies that the inter- dependence increases the price "multipliers," (i.e., the equilibrium reducedform coefficients of the price equation) by more than 30 percent. A more likely value of c2 t4 > 0.5 implies that these multipliers are more than doubled. Finally note that equation (9) implies that the interdependence of price and insurance raises the level of hospital prices directly (by way of the term cacl x > 0) as well as by increasing the price multipliers. 28 Since the stability of the system actually depends on the relation between PC.4RE and INS (i.e., the ratio of price to net price which reflects the fact that the uninsured generally pay less than the full price) rather than QINS, the estimated value oi E, exceeds the relevant elasticity. This makes it more likely that figure 3a is appropriate. 29 See the previous paragraph.

17 266 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY Assessment of the Welfare Effects of Reducing Insurance This section derives a number of alternative estimates of the net welfare effect of reductions in the general level of health insurance. The welfare of a typical household would be lowered by its increased risk bearing, but it would also be raised by the reduced distortion of prices (i.e., the artifically low price to patients and the inflated gross cost of care). To simplify the calculation of the net welfare effect, the gross gain from reduced price distortion is calculated first without regard to the uncertainty of expenditure. The gross loss of increased risk bearing is then calculated. The analysis shows that the net effect of reduced insurance would most probably be a substantial gain. The Gross Gain from Reduced Price Distortion3* It is clearest to begin by deriving an explicit measure of the welfare loss due to price distortion at the current level of health insurance. The gain from partial reductions of the insurance can then be calculated. The welfare loss due to price distortion is similar to the excess burden of an excise tax. However, the effect of insurance on the price and quality of care makes the analysis more complex. If we ignore these complexities, the calculation of the welfare loss is illustrated by figure 4. Point A identifies the equilibrium in the absence of insurance. Price Po is charged by hospitals I PRICE \ I I I I o xi OUANTTY 30See Harberger (1964, 1971) for an explanation and defense of the types of assumption implicit in this analysis. It is assumed in particular that the demand curves, which reflect the individual's preferences and his physician's advice, are appropriate valuations of hospital care. Although health care has often been referred to as a merit good, with the implication that demand curves undervalue care, there is evidence that, even in the absence of insurance, patients would demand too much medical care because of a combination of uncertainty, fear, faith in science, and the advice of self-interested physicians. See Dubos (1959) for some important insights on this issue.

18 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE ~ 6 7 and paid by patients: the quantity (patient days) consumed is Xu. Insurance lowers the net price Po and increases the quantity to XI.^^ The welfare loss is the shaded area, 112 (XI - Xo), representing the difference between the cost of the additional care [Po (XI - XO)] and its value to consumers [ 1/2 (XI - X,,) (Po A simple expression for the loss in terms of the elasticity of demand with respect to net price (11) and the total cost in the absence of insurance (Po Xo) can be derived as32 This analysis exaggerates the loss due to the increased quantity of patient days of care consumed. Because insurance raises the gross price per patient day, the demand does not increase as much as it would if the gross price remained Po. The resulting change in the quality of care may, however, shift the demand curve and partly offset the higher price. Moreover, the increased quality in itself also reduces the welfare loss. This more general analysis is shown in figure 5. Before the introduction of insurance, the price is Po, and the quantity is X,,. The introduction of insurance raises the equilibrium gross price to PI while the net price falls to 0 PI. The increased gross price (i.e., cost) per "Thus 0 is the coinsurance rate and QI.VS = 8-1. "Mark Pauly has called my attention to an earlier paper of his (Pauly 1969) in which an equation similar to (10) was used to estimate the gross welfare cost of health insurance. That analysis did not consider either the effects of insurance on the price of care or the risk-reduction value of the insurance.

19 2 68 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY patient day provides a service that is of higher quality as perceived by the hospital. If it is also of higher quality as perceived by the patients, the demand curve shifts upward. In figure 5 the demand curve shifts from DD to D'D'. The price that patients would pay for the original number of patient days, (Xo)of the new and higher quality product is P2. At the price O PI, the equilibrium quantity is XI. The shift to the post insurance equilibrium implies an extra cost of (PI- Po) Xo + P1 (XI - X,). The extra benefit of this shift is (P2- Po)XU+ 10 PI + 1 '2 PI)] (XI - Xo). The welfare loss is therefore33 L= (PI- P,) Xo+ [PI (1-0) - 1/2 (P,!--OPI)] (XI-Xo). (11) To derive a parametric expression suitable for calculating the welfare loss associated with different values of 0, we introduce the following notation: let n = P1/Po measure the gross price change resulting from the introduction of insurance and a = (P2- Po)/(P1- Po) reflect the increase in quality as perceived by patients and as measured by the change in their willingness to pay for the original quantity of patient days relative to the change in cost. It is clear from the analysis of the third section above that I > 1 and a < 1. Moreover, the small increase in patient days that has accompanied the great growth of insurance during the last 2 decades implies that the relevant values of II and a are such that the change in quantity is relatively small even when O becomes relatively low. Using the price elasticity 11 = (d X/d O P) (0P/X) evaluated at Pa and the fact that (XI- X,,)= -(P2 - O P1) (ax/do P), equation (11) can be written as: This expresses the loss in terms of the unknown expenditure in the absence of insurance Po Xi). It will be convenient to replace Po Xi, by an expression in terms of the current actual expenditure, P, X,: where the subscripts on II, and 0, indicate that these are the current 33 This calculation assumes that the demand function is linear.

20 WELFARE LOSS OF HEALTH INSURANCE 2 69 actual values. Although H, is uncertain, using equations (12 and (13) permits making a consistent assumption about the relation of II and 0. To evaluate the potential gain from reduced insurance coverage, we now compare the loss associated with the current value = to the losses with higher coinsurance rates of 0 = 0.50 and TOassess the sensitivity of these estimates to the assumption about the behavioral parameters (rl, a, and II), the calculations will be presented for several values of each of these parameters. The price elasticity of demand will take the conservative values )11/= 0.4 and ill/ = The demand shift parameter, a, will be assigned values over the very wide range: 0, 0.33, and The value of II, that is, the ratio of gross price with insurance to gross price without insurance, will exceed one and will vary inversely with the coinsurance In the special case in which gross price varies so as to keep net price constant,3i II = 0-'. A more conservative estimate of the sensitivity of the welfare loss to the extent of insurance will also be calculated by using II = 0-I/< If the value of II is written 0-p, there are a total of 12 different combinations of q, a, and 0 for which the welfare comparisons have been calculated. The results are presented in table 2. The dollar losses are based on 1969 private expenditure for hospital services (P,X,) of $12.6 billion.3r Note that there is a substantial gross welfare loss, between $2.4 billion and $3.7 billion, even if a = For a = 0.33, the loss is larger: between $4 billion and $6 billion, depending on the particular value of rl and fi. The final columns of table 2 show the gain from raising (3 from its current value of 0.33 to values of 0.50 and Using moderate and relatively conservative values of a between 0.33 and 0.67 implies that raising the coinsurance rate to 0.50 produces a gain of between $1.2 billion and $3.4 billion. If the coinsurance is raised to 0.67, the gain is between $1.9 billion and $4.8 billion. 54 In 1969, private insurance paid 70 percent of the private expenditure for hospital care. 35 Raising the coinsurance rate is probably a suboptimal way of reducing insurance coverage. A greater net welfare gain could be achieved by the use of deductibles, varying coinsurance rates, and payments that are disease specific (see Zeckhauser 1970, Feldstein 1971c, and Pauly 1971). 36The hospital demand study (Feldstein 1971b) estimated Iql = This may be an underestimate because the higher net price observations probably correspond to higher gross price and therefore higher quality. 3iThis has in iact been approximately true for the past 20 years. If net price is expressed in constant dollars, it rose by 4 percent between 1950 and 1968, from $12.20 to $ Total hospital expenditures in 1969 were approximately $24 billion. Federal, state, and local governments pay approximately half of these costs. Although some of this is for mental hospitals and other special long-stay programs, a substantial amount is for general hospital care. The calculations therefore understate the welfare loss by ignoring the excess cost of government programs. Moreover, only the distortive effects of private insurance are taken into account.

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